Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
On almost any day, the western approach to the top of my favorite hill looks like a fool's errand for a large woman like myself ... if "Only Up" were a local hill, it would be that western approach ... no rest spots to sit at, just block after block after block of up, with some ridiculously steep portions.
I have been sizing it up for two years ... there is an indirect western approach that knocks off some of the steepness, but adds time and distance with no real rest spots ... one has to be in a particular state of mind to even consider it seriously, or in need of an extreme effort to remain in mind.
I will never forget a recent moment in this trying six months ... a glance at the calendar showed that for all of having gone through two seasons -- half a year, exactly -- I was again in the intensity of grief and loss. March and April had lined up with September and October, to the day.
I cannot describe to you the inward shriek ... the realization that I had "orbited" right back to the same place, except that it was so intense that it put me out of mind of everything else that I had to do or think ... but although the portal of imagination was closed, the portal of memory was not ... a warning, faint but still audible even through the confusion of my mind, came through because basso profundo cuts through all that can be cut through ...
"Abgrund gahnt zum meinem Füsen..."
ABGRUND -- the ABYSS of despair -- I had learned that from Strauss's "Der Einsame," in the only voice I could have taken that lesson from: Kurt Möll [1938-2017].
"Abyss opens at my feet ... "
That's where I was, at that moment, and did not know it ... until I did. The abyss had opened beside me, after six months of being between such extremes of grief and loss, triumph and progress, only to end where I had been... but then again, the thought came to me that an orbit can also be used to build up escape velocity, and that I was not in the same place, but in the opposite place -- at the end, and not the beginning ... it was an end, but it need not be my end.
Another Voice came -- mightier and nearer, because within me, and imperative, and loving, quoting His own Word in the King James English I had first read the book of Proverbs in as a child:
"Remove thy foot from the abyss."
And that was all. A warning from far off, a divine command nearby -- so, as the Scripture says about when Elijah got that message from Jezebel, when I heard that, I arose and went for my life -- and the greatest physical distance with the most notable climb I could literally get from any local deep was that western approach to my favorite hill.
Fine day to do all this with a storm on its way ... still 6-8 hours distant in its bulk, but its early heralds were already in the sky. But I did not have time to equivocate ... I prepared and I got started, and went well. My body responded to the energy of having a mind on fire, and a will in utter refusal of despair. I went for my life, and got up quite high on the indirect approach ... still STUPIDLY HIGH, given that I live somewhere down in that valley that you see way, way off.
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
Around the corner to attack the main portion of the hill, time for a blackberry break, at least ...wonderful autumn holdouts in this mild climate...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
... with the first of the hill's fall's figs just coming in ... it was big and sweet ...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
... and the sugar and vitamins from the berries and that big fig were welcome, because ...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
... that hill just keeps on going...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
... and going ...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
On the western approach, one sees San Francisco's famous Sutro Tower, and can see from there that the low clouds are caressing it, and are not far from coming straight down on Buena Vista Hill. I have climbed to that point and been in the fog line before, but it was not that kind of day. The clouds were not that low, but instead one could see heralds of the coming storm. I improvised a place to sit for a little while, but everything around and within me was saying, "No -- the storm is coming -- you must climb out of it! Keep going!"
I had never before passed the gate to the final portion of the western approach. In my mind, because that approach is so much steeper, I knew that I must have been at least 2/3rds of the way to the top ... it is a more direct approach worthy of the additional brutality of the steepness ... but there that path stretched, the clouds hanging over it around the corner, with no actual end in sight ...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
Then I thought -- correctly -- "Those clouds are to my EAST. They cannot rain and storm on me -- they have passed by already."
I walk and climb because it is the best exercise not only for the body, but for the mind and emotions ... I go for my life, indeed, and the effort was rewarding me already. So, seeing that the clouds were to my east, and knowing mentally that at the height I was already at, there could be no more than a third or perhaps even justa fourth of the hill left to go, I went around the gate, and started upward again.
It is sometimes strange to be in mind much as the state of a day like that ... the mind clearing, but patches of fog still passing over ... the sight of downed tree limbs took me back because of what had happened not many days back ... some of them were dry, and one could see they had been there a long time ...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
... but the nearest ones were fresh like the heralds of the death I had missed by an hour earlier that week... the fresher ones may well have been of that very branch, because they were still quite green, and the needles were eerily similar ...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
... and what that really says about this hill is that it is among the most dynamic and wild spaces in San Francisco. Things happen that happen in real forests in it, in autumn ... the summers are long and dry, and there have been many years of drought too that have weakened many trees, so, the autumn and winter winds purge weak branches (which is also why I do not go through the interior of the park in winter). In clear mind all things are obvious ... but in the state of mind I was in, I was again thrown into the fog ... until two lines from a hymn I have known since little child days came through my memory ...
"Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come:
'Twas grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home."
"Amazing Grace," that great, beloved hymn of John Newton, a wretch indeed, by his own accounting and that of history, but redeemed ... a young man who shipped slaves who died as an old man who was an abolitionist and hymn writer ... and a minister, one of whose parishioners was William Wilberforce, who would get the slave trade in the British Empire shut down by 1832. Quite a story, that one ... and all true... and powerful ... because the God Who got John Newton together might just be able to hold some little woman in San Francisco in life as well until her work is done ... falling tree branches and near-mind shattering experiences notwithstanding.
I cannot say that I thought of all that so clearly at the time ... but I did get the message, and saw another little herald: a squash plant blooming in mid-autumn in the mulch pile!
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
There may be a December winter squash or two up there for anyone willing to risk sliding on that mulch all the way down the hill ... but it cheered me greatly just to see that ... and then I looked up at the view from that side of the hill. Even without full sun, it was amazing ...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
Just a touch of zooming in, and then...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
It was then that I knew where I was at last ... that big building is Buena Vista Manor, meaning I was climbing above the paved road, Buena Vista East, that went down around the mountain ... stupidly above it, because in the non-zoomed picture you can see how far off it is ... but this also told me that if I was going back toward the east, and was already up that high, the top had to be nearer than I thought.
The sun began to come out upon me then, if just for a little while ... I looked up and saw a great break in the treeline ...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
I was indeed much closer than I though, though just how close I was not certain ... and now, quite tired, and thinking of how far I would have to go to get back as well ... getting to the top of any hill or mountain is just half the battle... having enough energy to get safely home is the main part of the assignment, which is why great mountains like Everest and K2 have the greatest casualties on the way down. I did check the time -- still before my turnaround time, for I had gone up much better than I expected I could have -- and then also thought: turning around instead of topping and going down the eastern side meant being exposed to that steep, steep way going back down ... really dangerous with tired muscles at my size.
That hymn line decided it: "Twas grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home" -- every elder I had ever heard singing it seemed to be singing it in my ear now.
The other thing was, though hardly a rational thought: I was in extremis anyhow. Until I had reached the top of that hill, I could not say I had made my refusal of the abyss complete -- I physically needed to get to the highest point by the steepest path -- that sense of height and the effort it took was necessary. I have a friend that talks about getting through upper limiting behaviors ... the things we do to self-sabotage our own potential ... sometimes you just have to climb and push through to the top. Physically, I needed to get through ... I needed it. Not that temptation did not appear instantly at my right hand as I pushed on ...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
... and indecision at my left ... two paths diverging in the distance, and one steeper than the other, with no certainty that either one would lead timely to the top... I looked at the downward path that surely would connect with that low, gradual east route downward ... but that, too, was delusion, because it was too far down to be that easy -- it had to either be a ton of stairs or very steep -- and I did not know that path at all ... and then I thought of what I had left behind ... how easy to just go down and around again ... to orbit ... to not break free of the pattern ... downward, to the abyss!
It was not yet time to go down! That I felt, and then looked back at the two paths ... there was a decent chance that both of them eventually met the top, but I thought that the steeper one might get there first, even though just how much hill there was left I did not know, and how much more energy I had I was not sure ... but then the portal of imagination opened just a little, and I thought I heard, from way, way off, with every effort of voice projection possible even from a basso profundo in his immortal voice --
"You are so close, Frau Mathews -- SO CLOSE!"
At that point I realized my subconscious mind had measured the thing out even if my conscious mind was not clear -- there just could not be that much hill left, so, given that I knew that my energy was going to go anyway, and the only place to rest was at the top, I chose the steeper of the two paths.
The sun peeked out as I went among the trees ... and basso profundo joined the hymn singing in my head ... I knew instantly that I had made the right decision ...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
... and although the sun again went behind the clouds, the trees soon cleared ...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
... almost there ...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
There, at the top, from the western side looking north through the gap!
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
Wouldn't you know it -- the sun came out on me just then --
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
-- and lit my path back down again, the right one --
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
-- and left me in such awe that, at the tippity top of the hill, having worked out the object lessons that I needed about life itself, and how it was necessary to walk by faith and trust that God's grace would do the rest, that I could sing there myself, at last understanding all that I had been going through...
... and after that, I sat down to rest ... had to be careful ... it was not like going to sleep on Everest, of course (one would never wake again in this life, having done that at its top), and there was still good time before sunset, but STILL: that's a big hill to be climbing down in growing darkness, even on routes that I knew well. Still, the half hour there would be the best rest I had gotten for some days ... and the instant I closed my eyes in that warm sun, the portal of imagination opened, and the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past at last crossed the distance he had shouted across minutes before!
"Before, I could not come, Frau Mathews -- when Heaven gives a command, none of any of its own can move until obedience is done by the one commanded, and then everything can move. You had to decide to refuse despair and go for your life alone -- it was between you and the One Who commanded you -- but you obeyed, and as you continued right on, I could encourage you, and now ... now I can sing you to sleep, and wake you, on time."
He moved into the chill west wind and blocked it, and then wrapped his sweet, deep voice around me ...
"I once was your age, Frau Mathews ... but what is unusual about you is that you are already aged to a point of more responsibility than easy happiness, but with a happy ending up ahead ... as you will find because you have removed your foot from the abyss, and as Hans Stadinger, the Armorer of Worms, also finds out just after this particular aria ... as soon as he decides to look forward, not backwards ... although having been an old man too, I know most of us look back and miss our locks of hair..."
That is the meaning of "Auch ich war ein Jüngling mit lockigem Haar" ... I had to laugh about that, but not for long ... his choice of lullaby, I must say, was magnificent!
The aria is short, and so was my nap ... maybe not that short, but it seemed only a little while before I woke up...
"Wachen sie auf, mein kind. You must go down now, and I can no more carry you down than I could up in this matter -- but you know full well Who will, in Whose grace you stand and walk! This is your lesson in full, walked out -- go now, mein kind!"
The clouds were gathering to the west, thicker this time, and I was reminded that indeed it was October -- indeed it was time to go, only 2.5 hours before sunset, and at least 45 minutes of that time needed to get down. Upon going, I found that there was a southern approach to the top of the hill I had not known of before, and that linked up with a higher eastern approach -- a whole boardwalk section, like Muir Woods --
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
-- and that means there is still at least one more approach to the top for me to consider making, but for the day it meant I could round the hill without any steep drops until reconnecting with the paved eastern descent -- so, I both topped the hill and went all the way around it, in the same climb.
I felt surprisingly well by the time I had reached home ... tired, of course, but at peace ... able to sort out all that I had felt earlier, and look at it, and put it in proper order ... it had required an effort as extreme as the pass I had come to mentally and emotionally, but it had worked! After that I rested under a pretty sunset that was just beginning ... that same Sutro Tower just that far off again, and the hill there too ...
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023
... and as I felt myself settling into the evening nap I needed before my night's work, I heard that sweet, deep voice ringing ...
"So, Frau Mathews, what did you learn about yourself, and your state of affairs, and the truth, on the climb today?"
His face had all the empathy in it of his voice ... paternal love and concern and patience, and hope ...
"I am truly struggling with the repeated experience of being on the verge of being able to provide so much benefit to those I love while so many I love have refused the climb ... it was looking at the calendar and realizing the number has increased. The number has even increased from March, April, and September! I hear people I loved and who called me their friends, out here in Web 2 talking absolutely crazy talk -- we are sitting on the verge of World War III with the potential of economic collapse on every hand, and I have been given a tool that can help and folks just want the foolery! It makes no sense!
"But I heard what you said ... as you could not carry me up and down the hill, and even as the general rule is in mountain climbing, everybody has to get up there for themselves, or not. It is only by God's grace, in which I stand and walk, that I can get up there -- that anyone gets up there. That's a real hill -- and life has mountains like that too.
"There is a part of me that wants to resent the fact that I'm basically too tired to celebrate like most people would at a time like this, and still too hurt ... but I have a choice: to let that draw me to despair or choose to rejoice in the grace of God, that I or anyone gets to get to the top of any mountain and sees any good, as opposed to falling into every pit."
"Resentment is a deep, deep pit, and happiness -- like happenstance -- is by no means certain, Frau Mathews."
Then he smiled, and lit up the room in a preview of coming attractions.
"But you have been graced with wisdom, Frau Mathews, because joy is there to be chosen. You prefer to think of October 31 as Reformation Day, so surely you know about Martin Luther's favorite book, and how experiencing love, joy, and peace is indeed a choice to be made."
"Galatians 5," I said. "Walk in the Spirit per verse 16, and you get the fruit in verse 22."
"And you see, mein kind, that whether your conscious mind is clear or not, you will always be graced with enough reminders, in the way that you need them, so that you can act on the wisdom you have been given, because you have applied yourself to the right learning. You can always choose."
"To think that I heard 'Der Einsame' six months before I needed the warning," I said.
"Almost to the day," he said, "but as you know, there are no accidents. You had to process the lesson, realize the danger I warned of in my approach to the song, and remember it, on time ... but as I said, you will always be given those reminders, so long as you apply yourself to listen and truly learn, in mind that none of these things are coming to you by accident."
"A side note, Frau Mathews -- I have noticed that YouTube keeps serving up Schubert's 'Winterreise' to you, and it was so this morning before you headed for the hills. YouTube has both Martti Talvela and I singing the complete cycle, and I know both of us are a massive temptation to you. I have noticed that you resisted it, and resisted it, and resisted it, but finally, just before this climb, you looked up the story of the cycle -- and it turns out that you were absolutely right not to listen to it right now."
I sighed.
"Mr. Talvela sings the first song so beautifully in a separate recording -- but even without thinking of translating it, that first was sufficient warning when I heard it years ago. A winter's journey, in the middle of the night, in Germany -- a descent into madness! I knew that -- and then I found out I was right -- a young man, because of grief and resentment, refusing every sign of hope and even the idea that there just might be a loving God with a better plan for him, goes into that darkness and disintegrates mentally, spiritually, and emotionally ... his black hole is that open fifth droning on in 'Der Leiermann,' as opposed to that low F in "Der Einsame" below which the strings wander around an infinite possible further depth, round and round. I could not afford to take that journey -- not even with you as my guide, Herr Möll."
My companion looked at me and smiled.
"Do you realize, Frau Mathews, that you looked at that, and did an 'Herbstreise' today -- an autumn journey upward from despair? You looked at that, and doubled up on your resolve to go for your life in the opposite direction! Do you realize?"
I hadn't until he said it, but then it dawned on me ...
" 'Amazing Grace' is the difference," I said.
"Which is why it is good, and right, and the only sensible option for you to choose joy, Frau Mathews, for you have what the sad young man and many others in this world do not -- although of course you know from another of Luther's favorite books, that you need not boast of it."
"Ephesians 2," I said, "Grace is the gift of God, not of our own works, so no one can boast of it."
"Which brings me around to the actual corollary of today's lesson -- surely you remember the first time you heard German in song."
I smiled at the memory.
"Haydn's The Creation," I said. "I was a child, and realized I already understood German -- 'Das ist gut! Das ist wunderbar!' -- as the angels were singing about what God had made, because I knew what Genesis 1 said. That was the beginning, even before my cousin taught me the first 12 bars of Beethoven's
'Moonlight' Sonata ... long before that, the sound of German in wonderful music, singing the Word of God that I had read from very early childhood, had settled into my mind and heart."
"Very good, Frau Mathews ... your keen memory serves you very well. That said, do you remember what was said about the order of Creation? That is, what comes first -- darkness or light?"
I thought about this, and understanding came to my mind.
"Ah ... because somewhere back between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 evil came into the world and brought destruction and darkness, the world as we know it is created, coming out of the darkness, into the light."
"So, Frau Mathews, consider your last 22 months. Evil came, and around you people chose to worship its might -- the foolery, as you call it. You left -- the darkness and the chaos intensified, but grace kept lifting you and you kept climbing -- and remember how the sun shone on you out of the clouds today, but only after you reached the top of the hill? You are getting this lesson every way, Frau Mathews! The bad news is, evil is in the world, and will keep intruding. The good news is, since you are part of the New Creation, you will keep coming out into the light, so keep climbing, no matter what! The morning must follow the evening, and the dry land must yet appear again, out of the stormy waters, into the light!"
I considered this, and then almost cried out from joy -- he had sung the bass angel role in The Creation, and nothing had suited him better! My absolute favorite performance of his was part of it!
"Now, Frau Mathews," he purred, "I never was and am not now on the order of an angel, but to the extent that angel can be translated 'messenger,' I sang the role as best I could. And, occasionally I do get to move a few things around!"
He grinned, and snapped his fingers, and there I was in the church where it had happened, in the center of the front pew, to hear him sing of how the dry land had been drawn from the water -- in stormy darkness in D minor, for the evening had to come first -- but when morning came -- I knew there was a reason that D major had from childhood always sounded like sunlight to me!
Every moment that his mouth was not actually singing, he was smiling ... and eventually forgot he was a classical singer, rolling his head along with the notes like I sometimes did when working those bass lines in church! This was actually where he had walked off with my heart, having connected through that early, early childhood memory of a story I knew in a language I could think to know because I knew the story, through music because I was a musician in the bud, and through classical music, the eventual second great bulwark of my musical development ... he had connected because of his great joy in expressing the truth that I also loved ... and at 42, the deeper lesson was welcome ... trouble, loss, and grief in a wicked world would be part of the process ... but the morning had to come ... as it says in Psalm 30:4, "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning."
The other thing about him ... watch carefully and the reason he did not do as well in villain roles becomes apparent ... the joy and gratitude he had for being able to do what he was able to do on the level that he was, with the people he was able to do it with, was too close to the surface ... he almost smiled through Commendatore once with Samuel Ramey and Ferruccio Furlanetto ... when he wasn't singing, he was smiling ... his Osmin also could scarcely stop smiling, and once or twice absolutely stole the show because of the singer's joy ... he wore a heart bursting with love and gratitude on his sleeve, no matter his costume, because he was utterly convinced of the grace of life, because little Kurt with the small but oddly deep voice who played cello and wanted to be an industrialist instead ended up where he did ... not least with Leonard Bernstein, among the greatest of conductors, beaming on him with joy, because of the spiritual and musical legacy they could honor together, a Jew and a German, utterly reconciled.
"The grace of life does not discriminate, Frau Mathews. That is why -- and even above that is 'Amazing Grace.'"
He was still smiling as he had been at the end of the great aria, as all the other memories faded out around us.
"And this is also why, Frau Mathews, that it is that a young African American woman can look past all the reasons why people like her presumably do not listen to and learn from people like me, and vice versa, for you have international admirers as well -- and why, with all the losses you have sustained, the majority of the people that grace has for you are yet in front of you, as you continue to climb out of the trouble you have been in, these 22 months! Already you have seen many breaks in the clouds!"
He paused a moment, and then the great cathedral rang with the cry he had shouted across the gap before:
"You are so close, Frau Mathews! SO CLOSE!"
I thought then ... after 22 months, people had sorted themselves out pretty well ... things were clearing up because I had climbed beyond so many, and there was now room for new relationships to sprout out in the light and space ... I was close, had to be ... a few more steep pulls, perhaps, but ... I could not measure it out, but I just had to keep going ...
"Like my own ancestors said, 'I believe I'll run on, and see what the end's gonna be' -- for since the morning must follow the evening, and weeping is only going to endure for the night, why not, since there is nothing of the opposite course that I want, at all?"
He beamed upon me with all his joy.
"Now, you have it, mein kind. Now, you have it."
That was almost the end ... but I was not quite awake yet, for he had to carry me homeward again, and had one last thing to say.
"Because we love a happy ending in Q-Inspired, I will not express all of my pointed concern about how you are doing a bit too much again, Frau Mathews. Of course your mind is on fire. You have kept up all your Hive work, you are composing and arranging for the holidays and a bit additional while doing a whole fifth book in less than three months, and you have your Advanced Reader Copy distribution going internationally here on Hive and your book launch on Amazon from Oct. 30 to Nov. 3 and your video interviews and so forth and so forth and so forth ... "
(In case any of you didn't get your free advanced reader copy of Seizing the Crypto Bull Run for Financial Freedom -- available here until Monday, Oct. 30, and then free on Amazon from Oct. 30 through Nov. 3!)
Now, those "so forths" were dropping a third, and then a sixth, and then a whole tenth ... as we arrived, San Francisco's Richter seismographs started to quiver, just a bit ...
"Now, do not misunderstand me -- all this is good because all that you are doing is good and for the good -- but you've planned no rest in it, nor have you realized you can celebrate for yourself. And you have the audacity to have me in the role of the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past, but you don't do Halloween. Yet that will not hinder me in the slightest."
His eyes glittered with the intensity of his purpose.
"I am coming for you anyway, Frau Mathews, perhaps not on the 31st, but I am coming for you. Enough. You need a break. You need to go celebrate. I am going to break this entire pattern up. Get prepared. Get your friends in Q-Inspired prepared. Enough of this overworking and under-celebrating, Frau Mathews. Enough! Genug!"
He switched back into German just in case I didn't know he was serious, and again, San Francisco's seismographs registered that the tiny earthquake had intensified and had gotten beyond a minute ... but then it stopped, for he, after a great sigh, smiled again, like the sunlight coming out of the clouds.
"Gotta not wreck the city first," I said, and he chuckled.
"Not what I was thinking about, but yes, that too," he said. "I was actually thinking of your life, Frau Mathews ... you are an exceptionally dynamic person, and, das ist gut! Das ist wunderbar! Yet every privilege comes with responsibilities. You are doing exceptionally well on applying your dynamism to good, and I see you are maintaining your walks and time outdoors, so you are doing better there as well, but there is still more to be done in this area and you must attend to it! How did Father Beethoven write it in the margins of the last movement of his last quartet?"
"'Must it be?'" I said, "and then, 'It must be!'"
"And he was talking about his approaching death!" my guest said. "How much more, Frau Mathews, for your life!"
"You know, when you put it that way ... ."
"Which is why I put it that way -- but that is for next week. For now, Guten Abend, Frau Mathews. I leave you to your evening nap, to dream not of your night's work, but the morning coming."
He sang the D major portion of "Rollend in schäumenden Wellen" tenderly before departing, and when I did finally wake up from those bright dreams, the sunset too was smiling in hushed, contented joy.
Photograph by the author, Deeann D. Mathews, October 21, 2023